Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Your Cash Machine Is Depressed Day!

You were at first surprised by the overly familiar tone your cash machine started to take with you. Messages like, 'Whoops, I ran out of receipt paper (It's been a crazy day!)' and 'Working on it! Just a sec!' seemed to lack a professionalism that you'd come to expect from a banking facility. But after a while you couldn't help but be charmed.

As time wore on, you found that the cash machine started to open up to you a bit. On a good day, when you'd key in your withdrawal amount it would say, 'Working on it! (I can't explain why but I just feel so hopeful today!)' And on a low day, you'd request a balance inquiry and it would reply, 'Can it wait? I'm just'I'm trying to sort some crap out right now and'Just come back in an hour okay?'

Soon, the cash machine seemed to hit a steady sequence of low days. You'd take out a couple hundred bucks and its screen would read, 'Working on it. ('Nother night on the town huh? Must be nice to not be permanently embedded in a fucking wall.)' It hates taking deposits for some reason. Whenever you push the make a deposit button, the screen reads simply, 'Oh for God's sake' without any explanation or elaboration.

You're worried about the cash machine. The past few times you've used it, it hasn't spoken a word to you. Each screen is just a list of options. No, 'How can I help you today?' when you first get started. And when it doles out your cash, there's just a blank screen afterwards. No, 'Don't forget to take your cash and receipt!' Not even a simple, 'goodbye!' Just black.

You need to try to reach out to the cash machine. It's hard, since the button choices are limited. The best way to let a cash machine know you care about it is to just keep pressing OK. No matter how many times it tells you that choice is not valid. Just keep hitting the button. After so many error messages and attempts to fit your responses into its programming language, it will eventually try to interpret your choice as, 'OK?'

All you can hope for is that it will say something to you. Anything at all. Even if it's, 'You don't care. No one cares. You just want your money.' At least it would be letting you in. But if it doesn't say anything, if the screen just goes blank, and then spits your card back out to you replacing the blank screen with the bank's logo, you're too late. It's been too unhappy for too long and it's probably going to do something drastic. The cash machine that goes quiet is the one that's screaming the loudest inside its circuitry.

Pick up the phone and call customer service. Hit option 6 for 'If you think a cash machine might be thinking about hurting itself''